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Lundstrom quotes Captain Duckworth as saying that the essential tactical lessons for using multiple carriers had been demonstrated in 1942 and that “all we did was apply them in the summer & fall of 1943.” [55] But two other oftenunmentioned developments were essential if multicarrier U.S. task forces were to raid far and wide across the Central Pacific. The first was the growing size and sophistication of Vice Admiral William L. Calhoun’s Hawaii-based Service Force, which kept the carriers and their escorts supplied with fuel and ordnance and provided maintenance at forward anchorages. The second was the growing industrial capacity of the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. The yard’s ability to repair ships damaged in battle is well documented, but the yard was also able to make sure that new ships could get their defects corrected before they went to combat. For example, between 21 and 30 October 1943, Yorktown was docked so that its SC-2 radar antenna could be repaired. The flight deck catapults on the light carriers
also needed to be inspected and repaired, and there were other “fixes” required for equipment problems on the big carriers Bunker Hill and Lexington. [56]
The basic issue was whether and how the whole carrier force could successfully support the planned offensive in the Central Pacific. Could the fast carriers raid widely, keeping the Japanese on the defensive, while the escort carriers supported the amphibious forces? Or would the new carriers have to do what Vice Admiral Fletcher had been compelled to do in the Guadalcanal campaign—stay tied to the amphibious assaults? To make matters even more uncertain, it was not clear how, when, and in what manner the enemy would respond to the initial American moves. If the Pacific Fleet went after the Gilberts, would the Imperial Japanese Navy’s carrier and battleship forces sortie from Truk to engage it? Admirals Spruance and Towers both considered that a realistic option for the Japanese, though they disagreed about how best to deal with it. Towers apparently wanted to take the initiative and use the fast carrier force to strike the Japanese at Truk before they could gather their forces for a fleet engagement. [57]
More generally, was Spruance’s Central Pacific Force (later the Fifth Fleet) ready for its mission? Could the amphibious force, the land-based air arm, the fast carriers, and the surface ships acting as fire support for the assault troops work together effectively? Where the raids on Marcus and Wake had tested the fast carriers, the assault on the Gilberts would test the whole force. The memory of the Guadalcanal campaign influenced planning for the Gilberts invasion, but as John Lundstrom points out, the offensive power of U.S. forces—especially the carrier forces—had improved dramatically in one year. Rear Admiral Charles A. Pownall’s six Essex-class carriers and five Independence-class light carriers fielded almost seven hundred aircraft, and eight new escort carriers had among them justover two hundred planes. Vice Admiral Fletcher, by contrast, had commanded only 234 carrier aircraft while defending Guadalcanal in 1942.[58]
The assault on the Gilbert Islands was a success. Even the weather cooperated. An “east-southeasterly wind of 12–15 knots . . . greatly facilitated our carrier air operations; reduced by one half the fuel expenditure of the carrier task groups . . . and so permitted us to build up a fuel reserve that removed any concern over shortage of fuel.” [59]. Though the “forces destined for the operation were widely dispersed at the beginning of the assembly and training period,” they were trained and brought together in time to conduct the operation. [60] The commander of the force that assaulted Tarawa, Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill, complimented the performance of the carrier striking groups and especially praised the performance of the escort carriers, which had supported the ground forces. [61] Vice Admiral Towers echoed this praise, adding that “for the first time in history Carrier Night Fighters, operating from a Carrier at sea, were successfully employed against our enemy.” [62]
Towers, Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford, and others had argued long and hard against the plan to use the carriers as a shield against Japanese attacks from the Marshalls directed against the amphibious units attacking and occupying the Gilberts. Towers wanted to strike by surprise the Japanese airfields in the Marshalls before the invasion and then continue to strike them. As it happened, the carrier task forces were surprisingly good at combining antiaircraft fire and radical maneuvers to blunt the Japanese night attacks by torpedo-carrying aircraft. [63] These measures, combined with night-fighter defense, meant that the fast carriers could protect themselves from the tactic that was the basis of Japanese night anticarrier doctrine. Put another way, the weaknesses in carrier defensive measures revealed initially during the raid on Wake were being steadily overcome.
The fast carrier task force had largely proved itself by the end of 1943. The elements of the force, which included powerful surface escorts, could disperse to raid Japanese bases and then concentrate to shield the amphibious units that were taking away the land bases that the Japanese needed to maintain an effective defense. For example, on 5 November, before the amphibious assault on the Gilberts (to begin on 20 November 1943), Rear Admiral Sherman’s two-carrier task force struck the Japanese base at Rabaul, in the Bismarck Archipelago. Then
Sherman’s force was joined by Rear Admiral Montgomery’s three carriers from Spruance’s Central Pacific Force to strike Rabaul yet again, on 11 November. After that mission, both task forces hightailed it for the Gilberts, arriving in time to support the amphibious assaults as scheduled. Once the Gilberts had been secured, the carriers of Rear Admiral Pownall’s Task Force 50 attacked Wotje and Kwajalein, in the Marshalls, and then Nauru, west of the Gilberts. The improved defenses of carrier task forces and the ability of different carrier air groups to coordinate their strikes meant that “it was possible to disperse [carrier task forces] and strike multiple targets simultaneously.” [64]
MORE PROGRESS IN 1944
The successful campaign against the Marshalls showed that the new fleet design, centered arovund carrier task forces but including battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, was a success. The mobility of the carrier task forces, coupled with the ability of the amphibious forces to make landings “over widely scattered areas,” kept the Japanese from “mounting a successful defense at any one place” and prevented effective coordination of their land-based defenses and their seaborne forces. [65] As the U.S. Navy moved forward, it created bases for many squadrons of land-based long-range Army and Navy bombers, and those aircraft mounted
further and frequent attacks on Japanese installations.
The U.S. Navy’s carrier task forces increased the tempo of their raids after the conquest of the Gilberts. The fast carrier task force (TF 50), composed of six Essex-class and six Independence-class carriers and commanded by Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, gained control of the air over Kwajalein and Majuro on 29 January 1944, bombarded Wotje and Taroa, and covered the assaults on Roi and Namur on 1 February. On 16–17 February, TF 50 raided the main Japanese base at Truk, thereafter covering the U.S. amphibious assault on Eniwetok. On 21 February, as part of an effort to squelch Japanese air attacks staged from bases in the Marianas, the newly designated Task Force 58, under Rear Admiral Mitscher, began attacking Japanese air bases on Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and Guam. [66]
Task Force 58 was created to concentrate “the main combatant strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in fast carriers, fast battleships, cruisers, and destroyers,” in order to “guard against any attempt by the Japanese Fleet” to disrupt U.S. amphibious operations. [67] At the same time, the elements of this task force, in cooperation with land-based aircraft flying from the Gilberts, were used to neutralize enemy bases. According to Admiral King’s staff, “This program was actually carried out to the letter, and was completely successful.” [68] Put another way, Task Force 58 was both sword and shield.
The planning for the Marshalls campaign also accounted for the possibility of a major fleet action. In case the Japanese battleships appeared, “the plan called for all battleships and cruisers (except some [antiaircraft cruisers] and some of the destroyers) from both the Carrier Force and from the Joint Expeditionary Force to form the battle line directly under Admiral Spruance.” [69] The adoption of PAC- 10 had made this possible, and the plan for the Marshalls campaign shows the effects of PAC-10’s implementation. Task Force 58, for instance, “comprised actually all the new battleship strength of the Pacific Fleet, plus a considerable part
of the cruiser and destroyer strength.” [70] Yet the plan assumed that the battleships and cruisers could be pulled out of TF 58 in short order and used as a coherent surface force against a similar force of Japanese ships. Such a dramatic tactical change had not been possible in 1942.
The new Pacific Fleet matured in the Marshalls campaign for a number of reasons. First, the doctrine in PAC-10 facilitated effective tactical cooperation among combatants and task forces. Second, Admiral Nimitz had restructured his headquarters in the fall of 1943 to provide his subordinate commanders with accurate and useful intelligence on the Japanese. The creation of the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA) had “ended the dispute between [Washington] D.C.–based intelligence activities and those at Pearl Harbor.” [71 ] Nimitz’s staff also revised the way that intelligence (including signals intelligence) would flow to the operations planners. By the time that planning for the Marshalls operation was under way, Vice Admiral Spruance’s staff could request and expect to receive accurate and detailed information about Japanese forces and their bases. [72]
Third, Vice Admiral Calhoun’s Service Force had gained the ships and the skills necessary to sustain the rapid offensive in the Central Pacific. Calhoun’s command had created and deployed Service Squadron 10, which anchored in the lagoon at Majuro after Admiral Turner’s amphibious force had captured Kwajalein in January. Service Squadron 10 was at the end of a long logistics “pipeline” that delivered ammunition, food, and replacement aircraft from the continental United States to Hawaii and other bases and then to the carrier task forces at sea. [73]
Service Squadron 8 was the mobile source of oil and aviation gasoline. Together, the mobile service squadrons gave the fast carrier task force an extraordinary mobility—a mobility that in 1944 allowed the Pacific Fleet to combine its Central Pacific offensive with General Douglas MacArthur’s South Pacific drive toward the Philippines from New Guinea. The records of operations in the winter of 1943–44 also indicate a growing sophistication in air operations planning. For example, plans for strikes against carriers in 1942 had stressed coordinating the attacks of torpedo and dive-bomber squadrons so that a “pulse” of combat power arrived over the target, dividing and saturating the enemy carrier’s defenses. This was difficult to do; U.S. carrier aircraft did not do it at Midway, for example. However, by the time that Task Force
58 task groups attacked Jaluit and Truk in February 1944, the emphasis was on “a continuous flow of striking groups into the target area, preceded by an initial fighter strike each morning.” [74]
Given the mission, which was raiding defended Japanese bases, this stress on the effective flow of aircraft delivering ordnance was sound. So too was the concern for night torpedo attacks by Japanese aircraft. Night fighters were available to counter these Japanese night attacks, but the decision to use these aircraft was left to the task group commanders. As annex
C of the operations plan for these raids noted, it was hazardous to recover the fighters at night and dangerous to steam steadily into the wind with Japanese night-fighting forces (which included submarines and surface ships, as well as twin-engine bombers) in the vicinity. [75].
In May 1944, Vice Admiral Mitscher issued special task force instructions (known as FastCar TFI-1), noting that they followed but did not replace the direction provided by the instruction USF-10(A), which was the U.S. Fleet version of PAC-10.[76] FastCar TFI-1 was based on the assumption that for the immediate future, multicarrier operations would consist of “heavy carrier raids on major enemy bases . . . and heavy raids on enemy bases and areas followed immediately by assault and occupation by Amphibious forces.” [77] The pattern for these raids
had been tested and found reliable: “After complete control of the air is attained, then strike aircraft are used to support the actual assault operations. . . . In either of the above cases, the Task Force Air Plan provides for the coordination of the many attacking groups in order to obtain a maximum delivery of strikes on the primary objectives in an orderly and continuous flow. This can best be accomplished by roughly dividing the air groups in half and launching ‘deck loads’ at a time, each ‘deck load’ a complete striking group.” [78] TFI-1 also dealt with the risk taken by task groups (which together made up the task force) when they separated in order to launch and recover strikes. Because they would often lose direct communication with each other when they separated, doctrine did not have the task force commander always act as the Force Fighter Director, and therefore it was essential that each task group have an effective
fighter-director staff. As TFI-1 put it, “Unless otherwise directed by the Task Force Commander, each Task Group will assume independent control for fighter direction purposes.” This doctrine would not work, however, unless each fighterdirection team maintained a continuous plot of all friendly aircraft. Otherwise, friendly fighters from one task group would likely engage friendly fighters from other task groups. [79]
With the Marshalls secured, the Marianas were next, and Admiral Spruance, the commander of the attacking U.S. forces, had to assume that the Japanese might seek a decisive fleet engagement after first wearing down his carrier aviation. At the same time, Spruance’s carrier forces had to shield the amphibious assault from any Japanese “end run” against it. In what came to be called the battle of the Philippine Sea, Admiral Spruance therefore chose to shield the amphibious force—despite the argument by Vice Admiral Mitscher that U.S. carriers could destroy the Japanese carrier force and, in so doing, best shield the amphibious units assaulting Saipan. Spruance was to be criticized for not doing what Mitscher advised, but his decision was consistent with his concept of the Central Pacific campaign as a series of amphibious assaults that would move U.S.land-based aviation close enough to the Japanese home islands to begin longrange bombing.
What is more interesting is Operation Plan 14-44 of 1 August 1944, Admiral Halsey’s scheme to assault Peleliu, in the Palau Islands. The immediate objective was to begin the process of isolating the Philippines in anticipation of their eventual conquest. But the operations plan made it clear that Halsey’s planners hoped that the Japanese fleet would come out to fight: “In case opportunity for the destruction of a major portion of the enemy fleet offers or can be created, such destruction will become the primary task.” [80] Annex A (“Battle Concepts”) to 14-
44 assumed that the Japanese would in fact attack, that Japanese “carrier strikes in force may be expected but the enemy is not likely to close for decisive surface action unless he has been successful in inflicting heavy damage by air strikes on our forces.” Annex A also assumed that “our fast carrier forces will have had time to complete their initial bombardment missions and are substantially intact prior to an enemy threat developing but may not have had time for completion of refueling and replenishment.” [81] The plan outlined in annex A had Mitscher’s fast carrier task force (TF 38) “seek out the enemy and launch a concentrated air strike against his major units.” For this to be most effective, the carriers were to “be maneuvered in such a manner as to permit the simultaneous launching by all groups present of the maximum
air strike against the enemy at the earliest daylight period to insure completion prior dark.” Mitscher would command this operation if it took place. [82] If there were a major daylight surface engagement, Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee’s Task Force 34, the “Heavy Surface Striking Force,” would attack the Japanese. [83] If the Japanese chose to attack at night, as their surface forces had done at Guadalcanal, Lee’s TF 34 would engage them. If they tried to reinforce Peleliu with “Tokyo Express” runs by destroyers and light cruisers, then TF 35, a force of cruisers and destroyers under Rear Admiral Walden L. Ainsworth, would intercept them. [84]
What is important about this operation plan is that it was a whole-force plan. It followed the injunction of PAC-10 to bring all available combat power to bear on the enemy, using forces that shared a common tactical doctrine. Halsey’s focus on bringing the Japanese fleet to a dramatic engagement was just as clear in Battle Plan No. 1-44 of 9 September 1944—the plan in place for the battle of Leyte Gulf. That plan assumed that the Japanese fleet “or a major
portion thereof is at sea and there is possibility of creating an opportunity to engage it decisively.” As Halsey directed, the Third Fleet “will seek the enemy and attempt to bring about a decisive engagement if he undertakes operations beyond close support of superior land based air forces.” [85] The “optimum plan,” for Halsey, was to strike the Japanese with both his aviation and surface forces, and he was willing to withdraw the amphibious units in order to fight his desired decisive engagement. [86] As annex A to Third Fleet’s plan 1-44 put it, “The plan for coordinated use of forces does not discourage use of carrier strikes if enemy is found within range of aircraft. Particular effort, however, will be made to gain a position from which a predawn carrier strike may be launched concurrently with release [sic] of fast heavy striking force from a favorable attack position.” [87]
The image of Admiral Halsey’s fleet that is contained in his September 1944 battle plan is that of a combined force—not a carrier force but a combined force. The mission of that combined force was the same in 1944 as it had been in the many operational-level war games conducted at the Naval War College in the two decades before World War II—to bring the Japanese fleet to decisive battle and defeat it. Though the “long-awaited clash of battle lines never occurred,” the fast battleships “were an essential element of the Navy’s plan for decisive battle and therefore collectively an essential part of the campaign.” [88] Put another way, what took place during the war was not a simple substitution of carriers for battleships but the creation of a modern, combined-arms fleet, one that included submarines and land-based aviation. That was the innovation.
INTEGRATION TO FORM A NEW ORGANIZATION
The first argument of this article—the one to which most of the article has been dedicated—is that what Navy officers developed in the Pacific in World War II was not a carrier force but a combined force. Indeed, all the elements of this force grew in sophistication during the war and because of the war. Before the war, for example, carriers were hit-and-run weapons—raiders. This was not a trivial role, as Navy officers recognized, and it remained a central mission of carriers all through the war. But before 1944 there were hardly enough carrier aircraft for naval officers to become adept at planning and staging mass air attacks, especially against land targets. Shielding amphibious forces was perceived before World War II as a dangerous mission for carriers. But by 1944—certainly by the time Admiral Halsey’s planners were preparing the assault on Peleliu—the Pacific Fleet’s air forces were prepared both for a carrier battle and for protecting an amphibious assault.
By 1944, the Navy’s fast carrier task forces were a major operational-level weapon. Combined with surface escorts and sustained by mobile service and supply units, carrier task forces could roam widely and gain air superiority over large areas. The carrier task forces were therefore put to work sustaining the amphibious offensive against Japan in the Central Pacific. The purpose of the Central Pacific campaign was to put land-based, long-range bombers in range of Japanese cities and simultaneously to force the Japanese fleet to devote its resources to defending against the wide-ranging U.S. carrier task forces—instead of defending against the effective submarine offensive against Japanese shipping. In the process, the Pacific Fleet’s air and surface striking units destroyed or immobilized the striking power of the Japanese fleet The second argument of this article is that the total force created under Admiral
Nimitz was the basis of the modern Navy. Under Nimitz, the total, combined fleet was created and successfully used. But also under Nimitz, the Pacific Fleet created a modern support “infrastructure”—the intelligence, logistics, maintenance, and planning organizations so essential to the operation of a highly mobile and powerful forward-deployed striking force.
The two developments went hand in hand. Halsey’s Battle Plan No. 1-44, for example, could not have been feasible without the intelligence, planning, communications, and logistics support
developed under Nimitz’s leadership. Similarly, all of Nimitz’s efforts to create a fleet-support infrastructure would have been of little use if the Navy had not had the talents of several superb (though not faultless) operational commanders. Fleet officers also created PAC-10, a doctrine that pulled together the fleet as it had never been united before. Yet PAC-10 did not freeze tactical and operationallevel thinking—quite the reverse. PAC-10 did what doctrine should do, which is to give a force tactical cohesion so that it has energy to spare for dealing with the
inevitable unexpected challenges. One such challenge emerged in late 1944—the kamikaze, which was in effect a manned missile. I do not believe that the historians of the changes in the Pacific Fleet during World War II have captured this insight.
There are good biographies of Nimitz, Mitscher, Spruance, Towers, and Fletcher. But often the biographers have been participants in the inevitable disputes that preoccupied and sometimes divided the top commanders themselves. Thomas Buell, for example, defended Spruance; Clark Reynolds defended Towers; E. B. Potter (and Samuel Eliot Morison) admired Nimitz; and Lundstrom carefully investigated Fletcher’s actions during the war to amend what Lundstrom thought had been unfair criticisms. Though interesting, useful, and sometimes extraordinary research efforts, their biographies have distracted students of naval warfare from what really mattered, which was the creation of a modern combined-arms navy with operational reach. This article is an effort to shift the focus from particular “champions” to the process that the senior officers went through, which was one of integrating technology, tactics, and human beings to form a new organization.
This process was messy, and those engaged in it were often critical of one another’s views (and sometimes bitterly so of each other’s motives). But they kept at it, and the growing maturity of the fleet that they were creating is evident from its written records. But the story of that growing maturity has, in my opinion, been obscured by a mythology that portrays the rise of the combined force as in fact the rise of a carrier force. Today’s officers do not really know where the Navy they command came from. The evidence of where that Navy came from exists, it is true, but it is obscured by a mythology continued in books, articles, and films. This is unfortunate, to say the least, and this article has been an attempt to move away from that mythology and toward useful insights into the development of the modern U.S. Navy.
Note:
55. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, p. 499
56. “Salvage Diary from 1 March 1942 through 15 November 1943,” entries for 23 October (Belleau Wood), 21 October (Yorktown), miscellaneous repairs to several carriers during October, Arizona Memorial, National Park Service, Industrial Department War Diary Collection, National Archives.
57. Buell, Quiet Warrior, p. 202. See also United States Fleet, Headquarters of the Commanderin- Chief, Supporting Operations before and during the Occupation of the Gilbert Islands, November 1943, Battle Experience Bulletin No. 15, November 1943, p. 67-8 and p. 67-9, which are excerpts from the “Assumptions” portion of the operations plan. Also ClarknG. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The
Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy (Annapolis,nMd.: Naval Institute Press, 1991), p. 436.
58. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, p. 499.
59. Battle Experience Bulletin No. 15, p. 67-7.
60. Ibid., p. 67-9.
61. Ibid., p. 67-253.
62. Ibid., p. 67-99.
63. Ibid., p. 67-100.
64. Hone, “U.S. Navy Surface Battle Doctrine and Victory in the Pacific,” p. 74.
65. United States Fleet, Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Supporting Operations for the Occupation of the Marshall Islands
including the Westernmost Atoll, Eniwetok, February 1944, Battle Experience Bulletin No. 17, 16 October 1944, p. 70-2.
66. Ibid., p. 70-3.
67. Ibid., p. 70-18.
68. Ibid., p. 70-19.
69. Ibid., p. 70-20.
70. Ibid., p. 70-23.
71. Jeffrey M. Moore, Spies for Nimitz: Joint Military Intelligence in the Pacific War (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2004), p. 15.
72. Ibid., p. 22 for the flow of information, and p. 23 for the scheduling of intelligence support.
73. Fleet Adm. Ernest J. King, U.S. Navy at War, 1941–1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), “Second Report,” pp. 155–57, and “Third Report,” part 3. See also Thomas Wildenberg, Gray Steel and Black Oil: Fast Tankers and Replenishment at Sea in the U.S. Navy, 1912–1995 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1996).
74. Commander Task Force Fifty-Eight, to Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, via Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, subject “CATCHPOLE and HAILSTONE Operation—Action Report of,” 8 March 1944, p. 7, box 213, RG 38, National Archives. See also p. 1 of the “Task Force Air Plan,” attached to the report. 75. Ibid., annex C, “General Doctrines,” paras. 5, 6.
76. Commander Fast Carrier Task Forces, United States Pacific Fleet, “Task Force Instructions” (FastCar TFI-1), 24 May 1944, cover letter signed by Vice Admiral Mitscher, box 113, entry 337, “USN and Related Operational, Tactical and Instructional Publications,” RG 38, National Archives.
77. Ibid., part 3, “Cruising Instructions,” p. 2.
78. Ibid., p. 3.
79. Ibid., part 6, “Supporting Doctrine,” p. 34.
80. Commander, Third Fleet, Operation Plan 14- 44, 1 August 1944, p. 3, World War 2 Plans, Orders and Related Documents, box 57, RG
38, National Archives.
81. Ibid., annex A, p. 1.
82. Ibid., pp. 2–3.
83. Ibid., p. 3.
84. Ibid., p. 4.
85. Commander, Third Fleet, Battle Plan No. 1-44, 9 September 1944, p. 1, World War 2 Plans, Orders and Related Documents, box 57, RG 38, National Archives.
86. Ibid., p. 2.
87. Ibid., annex A, “Concept of the Plan,” p. 2.
88. Hone, “U.S. Navy Surface Battle Doctrine and Victory in the Pacific,” p. 95
Autore: Thomas C. Hone
Fonte: Naval War College Review.(2013) – Vol. 66: No. 1, Article 6.
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